(Veggie) Food for Thought
by irite
Summary: Identity hinges on circumstance. Or, How Bruce Banner came to be a vegetarian, from childhood onwards.


**Many thanks to my fantastic beta, dysprositos, for helping me wrangle the ending, title this, summarize this, and for being marvelous in general.**

**Warning: mention of canonical suicide attempt and child abuse.**

* * *

As an adolescent, Bruce had eaten whatever was put in front of him.

There was no opportunity to refuse, firstly because it would be rude, and he didn't want that. Didn't want to be angry, didn't want to be rude, didn't want to be anything like his father.

And secondly, because if he didn't eat quickly enough, the food would be taken away from him and given to someone who 'appreciated' it. He hated being hungry; the rumble of his stomach would keep him awake almost all night, and conscious, there was nothing to distract him from the hunger pangs. It was a vicious cycle.

So being picky, hearing his classmates discussing how they didn't eat hamburgers or carrots or whatever they didn't like this week was odd for him. He couldn't relate.

And sure, he heard a little about vegetarianism in the news, but they always associated it with hippies, who were mostly gone by the time he was old enough to know what was going on.

Bruce already had a hard enough time fitting in, being a science geek and all, and so he had no interest in being associated with the dregs of the counterculture.

So while it was sometimes brought to his attention, vegetarianism remained a curiosity for him.

* * *

At Harvard, Bruce was a good student, but that didn't make long nights and even all-nighters any less necessary. He'd never liked coffee too much before, but it became a necessity.

Food was an afterthought. He'd run to the cafeteria in between labs and experiments and studying and grab a bite to eat, usually whatever smelled good or was closest to the door.

And once he met Betty, he spent all of his spare time (and there wasn't much of that) with her. Sometimes they would go out to eat, but he was a broke co-ed and he couldn't afford to take her out in style like she deserved. So they didn't go out too often, giving him a chance to save up in between dates so he could take her to nice places.

She never seemed to mind that, but the few times he went home with her over the holidays and such, her father always seemed to be glaring accusingly at Bruce.

Like he _knew_ that Bruce wasn't good enough for his little girl.

And in that atmosphere, Bruce never would have dreamed of turning down her mother's cooking, even if he did despise sweet potatoes with a passion.

But they seemed to be a holiday staple in the Ross residence, and so Bruce never complained. He ate his turkey and forced a polite, uncaring smile on his face when General Ross implied that Bruce wasn't strong enough to carve up the bird.

Sure, vegetarianism was becoming more prominent, more scientists and nutritionists focusing their research on it, debunking myths. And he read a few of their papers, but it didn't really register with him because if he couldn't refuse Mrs. Ross's sweet potatoes, how could he refuse her turkey? And besides, Betty appreciated a good steak, and Bruce didn't want to make her feel like she couldn't eat one in front of him.

* * *

At Culver, Bruce had more down time—on paper at least—but Ross and his liaison (who stuck to Bruce like glue) were fond of inventing tasks for Bruce to do at the last minute. This prevented him from going home when most of the other staff left in the evenings, and so he grew accustomed to eating whatever he could grab on his way home late at night.

Usually fast food, usually hamburgers.

He had a few TV dinners in his freezer at home, and he was pretty sure there were condiments and also some expired milk in his fridge, but that was the extent of his stores of food.

He ate the same thing every day, and he didn't mind.

Betty would tell him to leave earlier, to come over to her place for dinner (she'd learned how to cook as a child, and he never had).

But opposing her father always just felt...wrong, somehow.

Which meant that Bruce only left on time the rare evenings that they didn't have something for him to do, and so he'd eat whatever. Sometimes he'd fend for himself, sometimes he'd go over to Betty's and chop vegetables or provide whatever assistance she needed in the kitchen in exchange for his dinner.

Food was food, and he didn't put much thought into it. It was just a biological necessity, like staying hydrated and moving around enough so that his muscles didn't cramp up.

He never even considered vegetarianism.

* * *

After the 'accident,' after everything had gone wrong, after Bruce's world had been turned upside down, food was even harder to come by than it had been when he was a child.

He traveled west across the United States through small towns, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of Ross's men, trying to stay away from other people.

Desperation didn't help him stay calm, didn't help him keep the beast inside. Neither did sleep deprivation or hunger.

So he grabbed catnaps whenever he could, and if he was offered food, he took it. Often without any way to repay the kindness of strangers other than offering his profuse thanks.

But he had to balance his priorities, and at this point keeping the monster barely caged inside of him out of Ross's hands was the most important thing, more important than paying back random acts of kindness.

Bruce's conscience _ate_ at him, but he had to prioritize.

He'd always been good at prioritizing.

And so, traveling west, he ate whatever was offered, and often whatever he could scrounge.

It wasn't ideal, but it kept him alive, kept him _human_, kept him going.

Kept him ahead of Ross.

And eating whatever he could find, barely subsisting, he didn't even think about vegetarianism.

* * *

In Canada, so far north that there weren't many people around, Bruce mostly survived on the few food staples he had picked up. He'd learned ice fishing from a friendly older man while hunkered down and waiting for a snowstorm to pass, and he used that skill as he traveled up, usually dozing while he waited for his line to bear fruit. Er, fish.

His goal was to get so far away from other people, from any conceivable possibility that Ross might track him.

Might find his body.

Because Bruce worried that, even dead, Ross might be able to weaponize what he had carried around with him. What Ross was partially responsible for putting in him.

But Bruce couldn't dwell on that, couldn't allow himself to get angry.

He wasn't far enough north yet.

Traveling, he ate what he could, and didn't think too much about what was going in his body. It didn't matter that much to him. Wasn't like he was going to have a body for much longer, anyway.

And when he got to where he deemed a good spot to die, vegetarianism was the least of his concerns.

* * *

Suicide hadn't worked, and Bruce was still alive, still running. He moved around constantly, avoiding major population centers, but that was stressful, so he decided to head to South America instead.

Near enough to America that he could hopefully contact someone for assistance with researching a cure, far enough away that he could stay under Ross's radar.

There was a bad 'incident' not too long after he arrived, and he headed further into the interior of the continent in an attempt to get away from the fallout.

One might even say that he was running from his demons.

But that was irrelevant in the face of the fact that, for the first time since the accident, he decided to settle down, to establish semi-permanent roots in one place.

To get a job, to study relaxation techniques in an attempt to ensure that other people were safe around him, to learn Portuguese so that he could fit in.

He found the job, made good headway with the language, and discovered a temple where he could learn relaxation techniques.

That was the first time that anybody had ever suggested vegetarianism to him, and he toyed with the idea, giving up meat for a few days, for a week.

But ultimately, he always came back to meat. Partially it was because of the cost (with his limited language skills, finding meat was cheaper than buying vegetables in bulk, usually, and he was saving every single penny that he could to pay for computer parts) and partially it was because he didn't know how to do it properly and he worried that if his body thought that it wasn't getting enough food, that the monster would come out.

And Bruce would do _anything_, anything at all, to prevent that.

So he dabbled with it but ultimately made no progress. And then when Ross's men came (_stupid, stupid, you got careless, complacent, and look what happened_) and he returned to the States for the first time in a long while, he was again living on the generosity of others.

Being picky, being choosy, being vegetarian...wasn't a luxury he could afford.

* * *

He went on the run again after Harlem, going to Canada for a while before his proximity to the United States made him nervous and he headed overseas, to India.

He'd done enough damage in this world, taken enough away from other people, and it was time for him to start giving back, to repay in whatever way he could.

And in India, he honed his rudimentary medical skills, learning on the job. He didn't have a doctor's title, but the people he helped didn't care as long as he could make their loved one (often ones because there was rarely just one illness in a family, cramped living conditions being what they were) better.

After a rough beginning, where he learned that deep grief was something that didn't affect the monster, or the Other Guy as Bruce began calling him, he settled in well.

Most people couldn't afford to pay him with traditional currency, and so he became accustomed to eating whatever they were having for dinner as payment for his services.

And, given the major religions of the area, these often didn't include meat. But Bruce saw that his patients didn't appear to have any negative health repercussions from this sort of diet.

So he didn't mind giving up meat. After a while, he began to avoid it in all of his diet choices, even when he was providing his own meals.

He wasn't sure of its calming effects on the Other Guy, but it did make him—the _Bruce_ part of him—feel better, feel like he was doing something else good for the world, helping to cut down on his carbon footprint and all that, and that _did_ help with the Other Guy.

So it was good. Vegetarianism seemed to be working for him, and he hadn't eaten meat in about five months when Agent Romanoff showed up to take him to SHIELD.

* * *

He didn't eat much on the Helicarrier, because that would probably mean braving large crowds in the cafeteria (if indeed there _was _one) or asking somebody for food.

And Bruce was attempting to have the smallest presence possible, to _not _attract attention to himself.

He'd gone without food before, and he knew his limits.

That didn't stop him from being grateful when Tony Stark offered him blueberries (or taking what was probably more than a socially-acceptable amount; Stark was a billionaire, he could afford more).

And then the Helicarrier rocked with an explosion and his hunger was the least of his worries.

* * *

After it was all said and done, Loki squared away under the watchful eyes of SHIELD, Stark—Tony—took them all out for shawarma.

The fact that he was paying meant that Tony bounded up to the counter, exuberantly ordering nine shawarma baskets with the works (two each for Thor, Steve, and Bruce, as it turned out). Bruce didn't feel that he could correct Tony, and so he accepted his with meat with a quiet, "Thanks."

Picking the meat off his shawarma would probably be seen as rude, and since he didn't know where his next meal was coming from after this, he was glad for the food.

Even if it was meat (which the owners of the restaurant refused to let Tony pay for).

But then Tony had insisted on taking Bruce home with him for a couple days until all the 'diplomatic shit' got worked out (Bruce didn't envy Thor the job of working out his brother's extradition with the SHIELD higher-ups).

And at Tony's "home," which was really a large skyscraper, Bruce was introduced to Ms. Potts and fed all he wanted and more. It was the first time in a good long while that his stomach ached from consuming too much food instead of too little.

Their kitchens were practically overflowing with food. The wastefulness of it all turned Bruce's stomach, but he was in the kitchen alone one afternoon and JARVIS, Tony's AI, quietly explained that Mr. Stark's staff kept a watchful eye on the expiration dates of everything, and when it got close, anything that wasn't going to be eaten was taken to a shelter.

Bruce felt better about that. And all the options meant that he could, at least, go back to eliminating meat from his diet.

He felt better, more balanced, about that, too.

And after Loki and Thor were seen off, Tony drove Bruce to the airport, forced several hundred dollars on him ("I wanted to give you more, but Pep said you wouldn't take it."), and left.

For the first time in years, Bruce had options, since SHIELD apparently was going to back off him and ensure that Ross did the same. For once, Bruce was happy with how his future looked. He finally had the space, the time, the means, to be _himself_, to be who he wanted to be and do what he wanted to do.

And that included being a vegetarian.

* * *

***steps off soapbox***

**I've been veggie for five years this month, and I wanted to play around with vegetarianism in a story for once. I'm not trying to preach here, please eat and enjoy whatever you want!**

**And if you're so inclined, leave a review, yes?**


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